As Hyandai entered the bathing enclosure, she noted that she could hear giggling from beyond the canvas. She pulled the flap aside an inch or two and peered into the bathing area.
The enclosure had no roof, and the stars overhead twinkled through the dimly glowing haze that spread over the campsite. The area itself was lit with several torches guttering from poles driven into the ground at the enclosure's center. A great expanse of oilcloth had been laid out to form a floor of sorts for the chamber, and to prevent it turning into a mud pit. In a tight cluster were six large, wooden tubs. Two long benches sat inside the entry flap and there was a wooden framework with cloaks hanging upon it right beside those benches.
There were three women lying in the tubs in the middle of the room chatting as they bathed. All three were young, none older than twenty-five summers.
She quietly slipped through the curtain and began to disrobe. As she did so, the women quit speaking causing Hyandai to glance nervously at them.
"Don't be a stranger, Hyandai." One of the women said. She was a blonde woman with densely packed freckles on her face and shoulders. "Please, come speak with us." She splashed the water in the tub next to hers, which was empty.
Hyandai, in her shyness, had tried to take the tub farthest from the tight little knot of women. Obviously, this was not to be, however. With a nervous smile, she walked toward the indicated tub. She noted all three women watching her as she walked; she saw the freckled one leaning toward the nearest woman.
"By the One, she's gorgeous." The girl with the freckles whispered in a tone few humans could have heard from across the enclosure. Of course, Hyandai's sensitive ears heard it perfectly and she blushed a bright pink.
The freckled woman's friend, a pretty brunette with thick, wavy hair, said, "And she's got good ears, too, Maegan." Then broke into peals of laughter as Maegan turned even more crimson than Hyandai and smiled sheepishly.
Hyandai smiled and stepped into the tub, it was only lukewarm, but more than adequate to get the grime of travel off of herself. She laid back, luxuriating in the mild warmth and the feeling of buoyancy.
"Thank you." She finally said in reply to Maegan's compliment. "You're very pretty too, Maegan, and your freckles simply add even more character to your loveliness." Hyandai said.
Maegan blushed again, and then laughed. "I apologize for trying to be sly with my words, Lady Hyandai." She said. "It's just that I'd only seen you at a distance before, and never imagined how very pretty you truly were."
The brown-haired girl giggled as well. "Be careful, Lady Hyandai, else you'll make Maegan here rethink her preferences." She said.
Maegan, also laughing, splashed her with a great gout of water for her lip.
"You just watch yourself, Tessa." Maegan warned, her gray eyes flashing. "Don't think I didn't see you looking at Wendy like she was a prime little lad."
At those words, the girl who had remained silent throughout the exchange made a rather forlorn little squeaking sound and seemed to shrink into the tub more than she already had been. Hyandai immediately took more interest in the girl. She noted that the shy one's hair was almost blue in color, and wondered at that.
"How do you come by that color of hair, Wendy?" Hyandai asked, smiling encouragingly at the younger woman.
"Uh." Wendy said. "Well." She added after a moment. "It's from berries." She finally stammered out.
This sent the other two women into a fit of raucous laughter, so much so that Tessa actually lost her grip on the edge of her tub and managed to dunk herself into the water. She sat back up sputtering and still laughing a moment later.
"You, you've got to tell her why." She said, squeezing the words out between laughing and coughing from inhaled water.
Hyandai immediately felt pity for the poor girl. This was terribly embarrassing for Wendy, but it did seem to be also genuinely funny. "Please, explain." She said, keeping an absolutely straight face.
When the girl looked toward her, she locked eyes with Hyandai's deep emerald orbs. Her own blue eyes opened widely.
She slowly sat up straighter as Hyandai seemed to feed her confidence through the eye contact. "I was trying out a new soap recipe, and it called for strawberries." She said, her ends of her mouth quirked upward a fraction of an inch. "Well, I had no strawberries, so I used blueberries instead."
Maegan and Tessa fell into laughter again. Tessa patted the young woman's shoulder. After a long moment, Wendy started giggling along with the other two, and once she had done that, Hyandai began laughing as well, refusing to laugh at the young woman, but quite willing to laugh with her.
---
Harlen walked into the men's bathing area, and looked about. There were a dozen large tubs set into a circle about the open space within the canvas walls. The floor had a huge amount of oilcloth covering it, and there were several long benches lining the outer wall. Two torches illuminated the enclosure with their flames.
Only two of them had occupants. The two men sat next to one another and watched the hunter enter. One murmured something to the other, and the other's eyes widened with realization.
"Huntsman!" He exclaimed. "Come, take a tub near to us, we would speak with you, if it isn't an imposition."
Harlen smiled slightly and shrugged. He walked around the other tubs to the nearest to the one who had spoken, a young man with an eye patch. "I always welcome good conversation." He said as he disrobed and stepped into the tub.
"I don't know about good, but it should be entertaining, anyway." The talkative one said. "I am Lanner, and this is my friend, Willem." He pointed to the other young man, about the same age as the speaker. They were both perhaps two years Harlen's junior, or so he judged.
Willem finally spoke. "I saw you with the elven lady, Hyandai." He said. "She's amazing, from what I hear."
Harlen nodded. "My name is Harlen." He replied. "We've traveled together some days now. And she is – Amazing that is."
"She's amazingly beautiful." Lanner said, grinning broadly. "You're a lucky man. Even if you only get to walk beside her from day to day."
"Every time I hear her voice, I remind myself of that, Lanner." Harlen said as he began scrubbing himself. "And every time she smiles, too."
